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My friend Jen sent me this link about social software, groups of people online, and some general guidelines about creating and maintaining social space on the internet. I can’t decide which part of my life this article feeds more; the librarian side, where I’m looking at social software for academic purposes, or the true geek side, who is/was a part of several of the communities mentioned in this article. (I mean, how many people can say they know exactly what that Lambda reference meant to that community?) But for the moment, the part that jumps out to me most echoes my own comments about the v-ref article from a few days back:

Now, when I say these are three things you have to accept, I mean you have to accept them. Because if you don’t accept them upfront, they’ll happen to you anyway. And then you’ll end up writing one of those documents that says “Oh, we launched this and we tried it, and then the users came along and did all these weird things. And now we’re documenting it so future ages won’t make this mistake.” Even though you didn’t read the thing that was written in 1978.

Word, yo. I feel like this is just what the v-ref people are doing; not so much with getting upset about unruly users, but explaining away their failure by blaming it on users. There’s been a lot of research on this sort of thing; I could tell you right off that there were problems with v-ref implementation. But no one listens to me, do they. Noooooooo.

I’m going to have a go at this. I’ve been poring over this article most of the morning. The guy who wrote it is a very important v-ref guy; he works at LSSI, the people who brought us the most expensive virtual reference software package ever. It can do it all; multiple seats (i.e., multiple librarians on at once), pushing urls, co-browsing (which is a fancy way of saying that the librarian can remotely control the user’s computer), and other fancy things. I will even leave aside my ethical problems with some of these features for the moment.

This article is so negative and missing some key points. The argument is based on faulty logic and a desire to blame the user rather than looking at a) the technology, b) the developers, and c) the people behind the desk answering the questions.

You can’t pick at v-ref without looking at reference services in general. The numbers are going down everywhere. People are less willing than they used to be to ask a librarian a question, whether they’re coming in on foot, picking up the phone or using the v-ref service. Why is that? You can’t blame technology for half of a problem like that.

There are lots of possible reasons for the decline in reference stats. The one I like to harp on most is reputational; why would a member of a community come to a librarian when most people believe that librarianship is a trade? We laugh about the way people think we have no education, that girl who commented that she wasn’t doing so well in school, so maybe she would drop out of undergrad and go to library school. If that’s the level people think we’re at, why would they come to us in the first place? You can’t blame a service for not enticing users if your product is lacklustre. Are we lacklustre? No. But people don’t know who we are, what we are, and what we can do. Before reference services can get a boost, we need to explain ourselves.

In this article, Coffman and Arret claim that “More important, the underlying chat technology that powered many live commercial reference services has also failed to find broad acceptance on the Web.” This is really interesting. Please, tell that to the millions of users of AIM, MSN messenger, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian, Jabber, and my personal favourite, ichat, are part of such a tiny niche market that they can be overlooked. Coffman and Arret are using the business world as their base of users to inpretret “broad acceptance”. This feels like the arguments around open source software; the fact is that chat services don’t produce income, so businesses find themselves less interested in them. Letting people talk to each other about whatever they want is not something that generates income. In fact, technical support doesn’t generate income either. Just because services aren’t interested in supporting customer questions in the way they probably should be doesn’t seem like a good argument for or against chat services to me.

And in the end, what is a library transaction? Coffman and Arret cliam that “the general public has yet to accept chat as a means of communications for business dealings and other more formal transactions.” Is reference a category of business dealings? Or a more formal transaction? Is it more like casual chat, or more like online banking? As Jennifer says, know what business you’re in. What business are we in? What model are we emulating here?

While Coffman and Arret make the grand claim that the corporate world isn’t into chat, even that’s not true. Every major free chat service provider (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) have profitable corporate arms that build business chat services solutions for interoffice communications. If chat is so unpopular in general, why do these services make so much money? Perhaps the problem isn’t the technology but its implementation when it comes to customer service. How much buy in do we have? How prepared are we to actually do this right?

V-ref isn’t difficult, but what librarians tend to not understand is that chatting online is not the same as writing an email. Chatting is chatting, and v-ref is more like verbal communication written down than it is like composing a dissertation on a question. Conversation is an easy back and forth, with frequent interjections. Chat communications should take the form of short sentences, not paragraphs. When librarians get trained on v-ref, they learn the software but not the tricks that make it really work. If we treated our phone questions the way we treat v-ref, I’m sure those numbers would go down too. Would we take 10 minutes to consider an answer on the phone, not saying anything, just holding the phone while flipping through a source, waiting come up with the perfect answer before opening our mouths? Probably not. Could this lack of understanding about how to conduct a v-ref interview have an impact on our numbers? I wouldn’t be surprised.

I think the problems are rife in this v-ref business, from attitudes to marketing and even the technology. Too much time has been spent on creating features like the (highly unethical) co-browsing and not enough on integrating the system into the real life of a librarian. If I had my way I’d re-write the whole thing from top to bottom. I would integrate an in-house messenger system with an external one, so that everyone is always on the v-ref software. It’s there when you log on, and if you have a quick question for, say, the music librarian, you can contact her directly that way. You can do that from your desk when you’re doing collecitons work, or you can do it from the reference desk when someone has a quick question. Virtual reference could have the effect of linking service points, opening up our points of contact both to the public and to ourselves. I would then have a point person who lets their IM go “live”, become visible on the internet at large instead of just the intranet, and let that person field the questions, with the ability to easily ask other librarians across the entire system, or transfer a patron to someone else. That way even if the v-ref is totally dead on a given day, the software is still fulfilling a need.

I could go on. And on and on. But this is probably enough for now.

The first mistake they made, back in the day, was deciding to stop cataloguing at the mongraph level. I understand why they decided to do this. It’s a lot of work. Tons of work. They’d never be able to cut tech services if they had them cataloguing individual journal articles, or individual chapters of books. If they had decided to catalogue the contents of compliations and conference proceedings, to list every contribution in any scholarly oeuvre as a separate record in the catalogue.

At one point the sheer size of such a database must have seemed too overwhelming for the poor systems. So big and sprawling it would be impossible to complete and too slow to sort through. But at this point you can probably store most of the sum of human knowledge on a laptop, so that concern has gone. Space is cheap these days, too. Google is giving gigs away.

But no. Someone must have seen the end coming when that decision was made. Maybe it was made before anyone even got their hands on it; maybe it was one person’s decision at the very beginning, back before one clear head could have prevailed.

If the libraries had at any point saw the error of their ways and thrown some support behind technical services, and done a proper cataloguing job on their collections, including journals most importantly, those leeches who make up the third party profiteering journal indexers/database vendors wouldn’t have had such an easy job getting a foothold. Think of the thousands that would have been saved. Millions! Wouldn’t it be better to employ more cataloguers in tech services than to line some third party’s pockets with university funds?

Eventually the necessity of full-text access would have reared its ugly head. But if we already had records and could search them, I think it would have been a fairly minor thing to get access to scanned versions. They probably wouldn’t have been cheap, but they would have to fit into our interface, no the other way around.

Liz and I were talking about the revolution, you see. That’s when we get all the scholars on the continent to say, okay, that’s it. We’re done. We’re not submitting articles to these bloodsuckers anymore. We’re not going to peer review anything. We don’t get paid to do this, we do it because it’s a service to our profession. Why are universities paying for access to scholarship they pay faculty to produce? So what if one day all the faculty say, that’s it. We’re going open source. Our research is going to be open to everyone. We’re founding our own journals. We’ll charge a bare minimum for pdfs or print versions. We’ll form our own publishing divisions. Instead of funnelling thousands to the third parties, we’ll fund a new department in our academic libraries to handle journal publications. We’ll submit to each other, peer review each other. And the sun will rise the next day on a better world.

Me and Liz are going to take over the world.

Today I learned that the Western libraries don’t collect textbooks.

I’ve been looking at the reference section and thinking about what it’s for. I know that it’s not like reference is an LC class; the individual libraries and librarians make the decisions about what should be in reference and what doesn’t need to be there. It’s about what is useful for them, not necessarily a certain kind of book. Also, there is an emphasis on availability and access; one of the lines I’ve been hearing a lot is “if this were in the stacks, it would be gone.” Not stolen or anything, just always out. So putting something in the reference collection means that the librarians can access them to answer specific questions, and it ensures that students will have access to the source.

In my mind, textbooks are a reference source. This is probably because so much of my background is in history, but a textbook is normally where I start my searches. A good textbook that’s fairly recent has a series of useful parts; a table of contents divided in a useful way for the subject, short essays on all the elements of that topic, and a usually sizeable bibliography of further sources. A recent textbook will cover all the important works on that subject. I think just about every paper I’ve ever written has started in the bibliography of one particular textbook.

So the reference section as it is is an add-on to LCSH. It’s a small version of the library for quick use, it’s a summation of particular useful sources. So my first thought was, how useful would it be to have another section just for textbooks? Like, extrareference. A few ranges of just textbooks on all the LCSH areas. So you could sort of browse through for textbooks on particular areas, get more in-depth stuff, that sort of thing. Sort of a dumb idea, but my God I had no idea they didn’t even collect textbooks here.

And why not? Well, they should buy those, damn those undergrads.

So. Just to sum up. We will buy sources that someone might someday use, because we sure would want to fill that information need, but goddamn it if we know you’re going to need it, buy it yourself.

Do you sense a note of snobbery? First, that textbooks are purely adjunct to classrooms, not useful in and of themselves; that undergrads are just going to come in and photocopy the whole damn thing instead of supporting an academic publisher; that textbooks are not worthy sources. That everyone already has them. (Doesn’t everyone also have access to, for instance, the London Free Press, the Toronto Star, and, concievably, the New York Times?)

I’m not criticizing anyone here, by the way. No one working here made this decision. I just think it’s interesting. Clearly I’ve been spoiled by the last two schools I went to, both of whom collected pretty much everything. Finding textbooks in the stacks was just a given. But apparently other, smaller libraries don’t have these things (Western and Windsor, for instance.)

Interesting, that’s all. See, while a lot of indexes and so forth are promptly digitized, there’s no way they’re going to start digitizing textbooks. Those things are really useful. And they only get updated every five years or so, it’s not like they’re completely out of date immediately. It will tell you in a snapshot who the big writers in a field are, you can take that information and go search for articles they’ve written more recently. Chances are they’re stilll writing in the same general topic area.

This job is just epiphany after epiphany.

My argument has always been that technology has not really so much changed things has it has added to things. Libraries, for instance, are not being replaced by the internet. Not really. People still have the same needs they had before, and if anything they may just be more certain that what they need doesn’t exist. One of the things I’ve learned since being at library school is that while google is an amazing tool, most people haven’t got a clue how to use it. It’s way more powerful than most people can even comprehend, let alone use.

And in the end, public libraries exist to provide light fiction, and academic libraries exist to provide scholarship and subscriptions to scholarly journals. Outside of, of course, the building itself, the hardware, the software, and the people. You see where I’m going. I don’t think the internet threatens libraries at all, and I’ve been flogging that half-dead horse for some time.

But going through the reference collection shows me where in the internet has actually changed things and made parts of it obsolete.

The thing about reference, really, is that the layman doesn’t really understand what it is. I’m sure I’m not the only person to scoff at the concept of an encyclopedia (what, you’re too dumb to go straight to an actual book?!), but that’s just the beginning of it. Even as a Ph.D student I had no idea how much organization had gone into information, I didn’t realize there were ways to find things I needed outside the library catalogue. I think generally people don’t know what reference sources really are and how much they can do for you.

But it’s amazing how many reference sources are being superceded by the internet. As Liz tells us, there used to be a time when sources would be gold to the librarian because there was no where else to find lists of films produced in a certain year, or indexes of first and last lines, and so forth. There are whole chunks of the reference section that could be safely replaced by a nice google input box.

Pictures, for instance. “I want a picture of,” questions. Why would anyone ask a reference librarian for a picture of, say, the Andrea Doria, when you can just go here?

There’s a sense of being on the brink while walking through reference. Not because of the librarians, not by any means. I don’t think there’s any danger of reference librarians going extinct. It’s the sources. The print indexes of things, this sort of desperate attempt to impose some order on the orderless. So much of that has been superceded, if not by google, than by digital versions, more or less complete.

I’m not being nostalgic about it, really. But there’s definitely a skill that’s disappearing in all this, or maybe just an instinct. Liz has these instincts about where to look on the shelves, which sources might answer which question, how to flip to the index and what to train her eye on. It’s these sorts of things that are disappearing, the coping mechanisms librarians developed in order to cope with the print reference sources. Like once the learning curve was incredibly great, and now it’s lessened, leaving them with a tendency to flip through books in a particular way, or to see the universe of knowledge in LC terms rather than database queries.

Sort of interesting, that’s all.

Reading through the reference stacks yields an interesting narrative. I wish those people who try to argue with me about the purity of the catalogue and how fundamental changes to it alter the inherent credibility of the librarian would try this; where there is some logic to the LC organization, it often borders on colonialist, racist, or just plain ignorant.

Where do you think would be the best place for a source called Dictionary of Medieval Europe? How about right between man-man catastrophes and world war II! They were the “dark” ages, after all. The American Dictionary of National Biography and the American Who’s Who are held in an entirely other range than the African American Who’s Who. The process of moving from “general” to “specific” feels like manifest destiny; we move inexorably from east to west, through the colonies and the eager little satelite nations, from most to least important to American interests.

Why they opted to pick up LC instead of Dewey I’ll never entirely understand. At least Dewey is a conceptual model, I don’t know what LC is really trying to do.

At the same time, another one of the reference librarians keeps telling us that browsing is bad. He says that the library is too big and the sources that are useful to the student are held in entirely other LC ranges, so browsing should happen via the catalogue, not in the stacks.

That made me really sad.

I enjoyed Joyce’s explanation of the budget, which I got to hear this morning. When we walked into the classroom Joyce lit up. Walter walked us over, and Joyce turned to him and said, “Isn’t it exciting to see the next generation of librarians?”

Walter said, “Hey, I was at her Harvard graduation!” Walter’s son is a Harvard grad, and he was there for a reunion the day I graduated. The speaker was Allan Greenspan, hard to forget that. Though, to be honest with you, I didn’t go hear him speak. I was busy graduating and being festive over at the Div school. So anyway, Walter was telling Joyce about all this. Being at Harvard the day I graduated, Allan Greenspan speaking, and so forth.

Joyce turned to me and said, “You went to Harvard?”

I just don’t know how to respond to that. I mean, yes, yes I did. I have the diploma on my wall, in case you want to check. But people are way more impressed by that than I think they really should be. So I said it was a master’s in theological studies, not, like, med school or something.

“People say they went to Harvard when they were just there for the day,” Joyce said.

The weirdest thing about that is that I was sure she knew that already. The fact that she was recommending me without knowing that I’m a Harvard grad is certainly nice. Because, come on, I’m mostly all hype, let’s be honest.

Anyway, the briefing was good. I’m not spilling any Western library budget secrets here, all the documents are public. Apparently they got most of their requests from the senate, and as usual no cuts to the acquisition budget, and increases for the operational budget. Of course Joyce had to stop and ask me if I had any comments. You know, in front of a room full of library staff. I didn’t have any comments, not even one.

Man, she must be the only person on this campus who has managed to actually embarass me so completely.

That doesn’t make me love her any less, of course. I just love her more.

Before I collapse into bed, I wanted to record one last thing about being trained for the reference desk. I was hesitating about posting this, since it’s probably inappropriate. Now, granted, this is a 2 week process (at least), and I’ve only really had one day of training. So I’m not expert on what this process is all about.

That said, I think it’s all at once completely understandable and completely frustrating that they train us as if we have never been to library school.

Not that I have any problem with the people training me. Everyone is very nice and very understanding, I enjoy my time with them very much. And there are points where they acknowledge that, yes indeed, we have taken the reference class. Also, cataloguing. We are being introduced to some basic cataloguing concepts (LCSH), which is great and all, but yo. Eight months of cataloguing over here. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but you’d think they could rely on our backgrounds a teensy bit. Just a smidgen.

On the other hand, I realize they have to make sure we know a base level of stuff. They know we’ve taken these courses, but they can’t be sure we got the right things out of them, can they. It’s like 505, we had to take the computer class and learn that there these things called “browsers” and “RAM”. Sure, we know that already, but they can’t be certain we know it properly. So they teach it to us anyway. Reference training feels like that so far. Sometimes I feel like the instruction has that sort of “I-know-you-already-know-this” feel to it, but other times it feels shockingly basic and unironic.

Here’s five hours of information you already know better than you ever wanted to! Have you got it all? Are you confused? Still with me?

There were points during the training when I thought that I really didn’t need the program to do this job. They were going to teach it all to me again anyway. Granted, that was during the afternoon when I really needed my nap. I get a bit groggy at about 2pm, so my reflections should probably not be trusted.

I’m enjoying the trek through the print sources, though. We’re getting upclose and personal with every source in that collection. That really will take weeks at the rate we’re going, and that’s okay with me. It’s pretty fun looking at them individually. The woman who’s training us has a degree in history, so we ooh and ahh over the same sources.

My mother told me to stay quiet and I’m not doing that very well. It’s really hard for me. I can’t help it. There’s just always some quip coming out of me and I should probably put a stop to that. There’s a little quip monster living deep down inside me who just has to have her say.

Resolution: blog more, talk less.

Tomorrow we’re going to a briefing for the staff by the infamous University Librarian. I can’t wait! I think we’re being asked along for the experience, since it’s about things that have nothing to do with us. But it’s all about library planning and budgeting, which I’ve gotten a little bit close to through strategic planning, so I’m pretty interested to hear how this goes down. Communication plan indeed; now I get to see it happen.

I’ll keep quiet like a little sponge and keep you posted.

Today in cataloguing we got a test run of OCLC, which was interesting. I’ve been hoping to see how cataloguing works on the ground running for some time; I wanted to see interfaces. So that was great.

As a bit of a sidebar my professor also told us about a little something we sort of already knew, but this gave it a name. Bibliographic level. At what level are you cataloguing? The standard is monograph, of course. We’re not cataloguing, as he said, chapters, or concepts. Just the item as a whole.

For a second I got a little chill in class. Concepts. Can you imagine cataloguing concepts? I mean, what a pain in the ass, but can you imagine what a cool search tool that would create? I mean, we used to catalogue by article in serials, which I think is probably better done at this point by proquest or jstor, really. But still, we were doing it. Not by concept, though. That would be incredibly difficult, I would think.

And then I saw this on the Library Link of the day:

As Internet users become accustomed to enhanced content on other Web sites, they will expect libraries to provide similar enhancements in the OPAC. Librarians maintaining existing automation systems will need to keep up with their vendors’ newest products and to visit the Web sites of the vendors’ other customers to get ideas for enhancements that could be useful. Those looking for new automation systems will need to evaluate each product’s enhancement and integration capabilities.
Google and amazon.com can do it. Can libraries do it to? I can feel the revolution, my friends.